Hey everybody. Today I was watching the Three Hoodoo Sisters video. She's a tarot reader on Youtube. She was discussing that religion should only be open to one certain race but not all other races. I made a comment where I disagree that people can believe what they want and she explain to me that not all religion is for everybody because of other race, cultural, and ethnicity. I comment by saying if that's the case then they're not an acceptable religion. I believe in Spiritual Equality and I believe that all religions should be accepted to race, gender, sexual orientation and etc.
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ingridstjerne257
Re: Spirituality Equality
To me, comments from people like that never makes sense. On the spirit level God, Spirit, Gods, Goddesses, etc., accept everyone everywhere at any time. It's one thing where there are private, traditional or family strict groups or structures and another to say NOBODY else can experience a god or religion outside the group.
So I agree with you Bartmanhomer!
Also, I honestly believe we can all learn from each other.
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Re: Spirituality Equality
Originally posted by ingridstjerne257 View PostTo me, comments from people like that never makes sense. On the spirit level God, Spirit, Gods, Goddesses, etc., accept everyone everywhere at any time. It's one thing where there are private, traditional or family strict groups or structures and another to say NOBODY else can experience a god or religion outside the group.
So I agree with you Bartmanhomer!
Also, I honestly believe we can all learn from each other.
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Kick Ass Little Crow
- Oct 2010
- 2417
- Eclectic Hellenic
- He/Him
- New York
- Because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.
Re: Spirituality Equality
This is the closed vs open practice problem and that really boils down to the problem of cultural appropriation. Historically, religions are a product of culture and entwined with that culture group's practices and experiences. For example, the lwa are African spirits and the ritual practices which revere them are African. Their Africaness is inherent to their identity and the cultural legacy of enslaved black people in America is inherent to the identity of voudoun. A non-black person who engages with voudoun is at risk of missing something inherent to the cultural understanding of the practice.
There's also a tribal element to it which is related to that cultural identity. When the Greeks colonized new regions they brought their gods and mapped the local gods to the closest approximation. It was understood that these gods were the same and the ritual syncretism that followed emphasized that, but this did not change that the Greek rituals were Greek and the foreign were foreign, even as they begin to mix. This tribal element have the Greeks cultural superiority and lead to exoticifation of foreign import cults to which they did not have appropriate context. This cultural conflict extended to contact with barbarians, who, to the Greeks, may have worshipped similar gods, but did so in a weird foreign way. Same entity, different cultures, different religions.
We also need to recognize that historically most religions were not universal. You generally could not just decide to follow a specific cultic practice because you felt like it. This is modern bias resulting from christian culture. Religion was very often tribal in a cultural sense. For example, a very legitimate argument in the early church was if nonjews could be Christians. This was because judaism was a tribal faith, it was the religion of God's chosen people born of their specific culture and legacy, and insular because of that. While people could convert to judaism, it was done at after a lengthy period of study, often predicated on a mairrage. The expectation thereon was that the person would learn to be jewish and, generally, having married into a Jewish family, would live as a jew.
We also see clan and kinship based gods. The idea of a unified pantheon is a product of empire building civilizations. On a local level that type of unity didn't exist so rigidly. Each region would elevate or lower specific gods depending on local preference. This largely evolved as a result of local cults and often family cults. For example, many great kami in shinto were originally patron gods of specific clans (clan in this context is more inclusive than kin group, more like extended household) who grew in prominance as the clans' grew in power, that is until the clan exerted control over a society instead of just servants and tributaries. As a result it would be really weird to worship that clan's god if you weren't part of that clan, subservient to that clan, or attempting to suck up to them.
Lastly it's important to consider the historic impact of this faith on these culture groups. Many religious practices have historically been persecuted by outgroups, which has impacted a group culturally. The Jews are a good example since their persecution is a central point to the religion, but hoodoo and voudoun are also.
They are African diasporic religions with syncretic elements. What this means is that when Africans were taken from their homes as slaves, they brought their religion with them to new places. A diaspora is a scattering of a group across the world. In these new places the tolerance for their religious beliefs varied, but was generally negative. As a result enslaved people's were largely forced to adopt, or forced to adopt the appearence of christianity. Voudoun does this through syncretism, that means it combines elements of African spirituality with christianity. The religion would not exist without slavery. The history of enslaved africans is central to the formation of voudoun and the reason for many of it's themes and idiosyncrasies.
For those who practice this system it feels really disrespectful and dismissive for some white dude to not understand that and say he can commune with the lwa. This is because he likely lacks the cultural legacy, he doesn't have an inherited concept of being a diasporic african, but also because, historically, people that look like him have persecuted the cultural practice that he's trying to claim. It's also nearly inevitable that it will be taken out of context because occultism and religion in general has a really bad habit of missing important details.
Like many ancient western cults, voudoun (and sometimes hoodoo, but that is way more nebulous and messy) is an intiatory religion. It's rituals are meant to be hidden from the public, and their "magic" is not meant for general use. Western religion had a bunch of mystery cults and there's a lot of reasons for them to exist, but the biggest take away to them is they are exclusive. Regardless of if anyone *could* join not everyone *is* part of them and there are often special rites involved that vary by tradition. Usually theres some idea of initiates undergoing purification, they are distinguished from those outside the practice.
Now this topic is super messy and I'm on the sliding scale side of this. I don't think it's appropriate to wholesale say something is totally off limits in every context, but I also think it's deeply missing the point to pretend xyz thing is universal because that denies both the historic precedent that it isn't, and also implies that just because xyz entity exists it should talk to you. We must awknowledge the source of our traditions and the myriad categories to which they belong. Faith is a deeply personal connection and religion is inextricably tied with cultural notions of identity which are erased when one divorces it from it's context.They moaned and squealed, and pressed their snouts to the earth. We are sorry, we are sorry.
Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.
-Madeline Miller, Circe
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PF Ordo Hereticus
- Mar 2009
- 8681
- Jedi
- elsewhere
- The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force.
Re: Spirituality Equality
This ventures into the glorious cluster-screw that is a debate on cultural appropriation. Corvus has pointed out some of the landmines in that area better than I could hope to. Regarding my feelings on incorporating practices from closed systems
Originally posted by MaskedOne View PostI don't as a rule believe in spiritual copyright. Unless you can draw a very clear and very short line between a person's private practices and injury done to another person then I really don't care what your practices are or where they come from and my feelings on individuals and institutions that choose to judge based on the origin of a private practice tend toward hostile. With that said, once you start interacting with the rest of the world, other rules tend to kick in. The short version of the rules for wider interaction amount to:
1. Don't claim titles that you have no right to. Priest/Shaman/Medicine Person/etc are frequently titles specific to a context in either a society or an institution. To use a non-Pagan example, if you tell me that you're a Catholic priest then the Catholic Church better tell me the same thing because otherwise you're probably lying and that will offend me.
2. Be aware of where you're drawing your practices from and honest about those origins if you bother to discuss them with people. This basically sums up all additions that I might make. Practice with integrity. If integrity is near the core of your practice then I'm probably not going to take issue with you.Life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.
Yoda: Dark Rendezvous
"But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."
John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper
"You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."
Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis
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Re: Spirituality Equality
Well, I don't believe that religion and spirituality so be excluded only a single race and culture. I do believe that all religions and spirituality should be open to everybody and I find the exclusion very prejudicial and also racist if some religions have that mindset mentality. I really don't agree with that at all.
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The Gaze of the Abyss
- Feb 2007
- 9295
- Alchemist and Neo-American Redneck Buddhist
- Frozen Northern Michigan, near Thunder Bay
- Where are the tweezers?
Re: Spirituality Equality
I believe in the right of the individual to pick from the buffet of possible thoughts those thoughts that the individual wants to think.
If knowledge is useful, it belongs to anybody who has it and uses it.
If knowledge is useless, than anybody is free to wallow in it.Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.
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Kick Ass Little Crow
- Oct 2010
- 2417
- Eclectic Hellenic
- He/Him
- New York
- Because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.
Re: Spirituality Equality
Originally posted by Bartmanhomer View PostWell, I don't believe that religion and spirituality so be excluded only a single race and culture. I do believe that all religions and spirituality should be open to everybody and I find the exclusion very prejudicial and also racist if some religions have that mindset mentality. I really don't agree with that at all.
Broadly, I agree that there's no spiritual copyright, that the divine takes many forms and we can relate to it any way or form which speaks to us, however, I really think if one is going to adopt this viewpoint they need to at least understand why closed traditions exist and why the Hoodoo Sisters think that the persecuted african traditions which are central to their magic should not be given out wholesale to the same groups that enslaved and persecuted them. It is a gap in understanding and knowledge to not realize this if one chooses to engage with these types of practices. There are much better arguments to be made toward "spiritual equality" and at the very least you need to adopt one, instead of whining that black people should let you in their club. There is a middle ground where one can be respectful and calling them racist isn't it- it's also not even accurate, Racism is a systemic quality which cannot be enforced by a minority on a privileged group.Last edited by Corvus; 10 Sep 2020, 07:26.They moaned and squealed, and pressed their snouts to the earth. We are sorry, we are sorry.
Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.
-Madeline Miller, Circe
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Re: Spirituality Equality
Originally posted by Corvus View PostI think you're kinda missing the point. Especially in the difference between what constitutes a belief and what constitutes a tradition. You can believe whatever you want, that doesn't mean its appropriate to people who have elements of that belief as a tradition. For voudoun the lwa generally do not ride non-initiates. Initiation and the rituals associated with it give them the tools to interpret and relate with the alien forms of the divine spirits. For many people religion is not meant to be a grab bag of faiths and rituals that you get to pick and choose and ignore the cultural and historic legacy to. I find your reply to be flippant and completely misses the nuance I'm trying to communicate.
Broadly, I agree that there's no spiritual copyright, that the divine takes many forms and we can relate to it any way or form which speaks to us, however, I really think if one is going to adopt this viewpoint they need to at least understand why closed traditions exist and why the Hoodoo Sisters think that the persecuted african traditions which are central to their magic should not be given out wholesale to the same groups that enslaved and persecuted them. It is a gap in understanding and knowledge to not realize this if one chooses to engage with these types of practices. There are much better arguments to be made toward "spiritual equality" and at the very least you need to adopt one, instead of whining that black people should let you in their club. There is a middle ground where one can be respectful and calling them racist isn't it- it's also not even accurate, Racism is a systemic quality which cannot be enforced by a minority on a privileged group.
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Re: Spirituality Equality
I agree and understand that some of religion's private with the family.Last edited by Bartmanhomer; 25 Oct 2020, 10:18.
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